


Adverse Necessity

by LeoOtherLands



Series: All the Broken Pieces [25]
Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Everything's the same except the survivors get to go home sometimes, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I think?, Is this fluff?!, Light Petting, M/M, Mentions of Death, Mentions of canon typical violence, Rare Pairings, Showers, So sue me I wanted to design a solar water heating system, Sort Of, Spanking, Suicide by killer, Touch-Starved, i had fun with this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:49:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27684499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeoOtherLands/pseuds/LeoOtherLands
Summary: What does it look like when touch starvation and touch aversion are all tangled up together? Jake knows, yeah, he knows all too well.
Relationships: Evan MacMillan | The Trapper/Jake Park
Series: All the Broken Pieces [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1386661
Comments: 8
Kudos: 37





	Adverse Necessity

I hauled myself through the cabin’s door and just stood there for a moment, blinking like a dry-eyed idiot. I _was_ a dry-eyed idiot and I _hurt_. Getting the _Oni_ to kill me hadn’t been that bad… He’d at least done it quick and clean and without much preamble. Looked for me, found me, killed me with that giant _katana_ of his. Simple. Easy.

Unfulfilling.

Getting the Doctor to kill me hadn’t been the most stellar alternative, though. Doc liked to _play_ with his meat and messing with him outside a trial had been _messy_ , to say the least. I still had blood on me, even after respawning at the campfire, and my muscles still twitched from the volts he’d sent through me.

Not that it was precisely the volts that’d killed me… The Doc understood electricity in ways I never would and he knew how to manipulate it to strum nerves I hadn’t even known I _had_ before meeting him. He knew enough to understand he could put anything from a hundred to a thousand volts through me and I could likely take it, if he kept the amps right. After all, voltage, in the end, was more or less the pressure that allowed electrons to flow, or the _speed_ they flowed at. The amps, on the other hand, were the _volume_ of electrons flowing through a conductor. Aka, _me_! And it was the volume that would kill you. Not the speed.

And fuck had I played conductor… I’d lost count of exactly how long things had gone on, after a while. Since I’d been the dumbass who’d intentionally gone looking for trouble, the Entity hadn’t interfered and the Doctor got to have his fun, until he got tired of me.

_Fuck…_

His fun had at least been limited to zapping me repeatedly and sticking me with pointy objects, mostly needles, and that was tolerable, but fuck, not my best moment. The next time I wanted to go screw with a killer, I’d pick someone else…

The thought propelled me forward into the room and I swayed back and forth, my limbs _still_ not wanting to fully listen to me, even now. I’d gone back to the campfire, faced the others-who-were-there’s quizzical looks and questions of where I’d been for so long, determined no one needed _me_ there, and decided to cash in on some of my banked time out of the Entity’s realm. Hell, I hadn’t been home in what felt like forever, and no one else was currently on a little “vacation,” so why the fuck not? I had more than enough time saved up, and I wanted a damn bath.

I steadied myself with a hand on the rough boards of my table, eyes skipping over the main room of the cabin I’d slowly built, squirreling away wood and coming out here to create this hideaway one nail and sliver at a time. Everything I had was basically in sight. A down stuffed sleeping bag on a plank frame, cast iron pans and an assortment of knives hung on pegs near a wood stove that doubled for heating and cooking, a few other odds and ends and necessities I’d scavenged and/or found hunting.

The only things I couldn’t see were tucked away in a side room. My one side room.

I could have set up some solar and had a few electronics, but I’d said fuck that. All I really wanted was the ability to take a shower, a _hot_ shower, after a day of being in the woods. It’d taken some rigging and some clever acquisitions in the right places, but in the end, solar water heating systems were one of the easiest systems to assemble. A couple of flat-plate solar thermal collectors on the roof, next to a single PV panel, to power my DC pump, and a propylene glycol/water mix circulated down to a heat exchanger and three-hundred-gallon, fiberglass storage tank that held my hot water, until I turned on another little pump and jumped in my shower.

A basic pressurized, closed-loop system. Nothing special, even if I had opted for a few small add-ons. Solar water heating systems never quite got bath water up to the optimum two hundred degrees of conventional water heaters. Most of the time, I was okay with that _almost hot_ bath, but there were times… there were times you just fucking needed a hot shower. For times like that I had a little back-up generator, I mainly kept for really bad emergencies, or… hot baths… The thing was attached to a back-up water heater that got my water up those last few degrees. Just a matter of flipping a few levers and shutoff valves. Nothing serious.

Nothing serious, and fuck, I needed a hot shower.

Shutting my eyes, I swallowed. Centered myself in the room, and took a few cautious steps forward. I wasn’t in the Entity’s realm anymore and the weirdest thing with that was I could _die_ out here. Die and not come back and wouldn’t that be a kicker? Go back home to wash some shit memory away, and die falling and banging my head on my own god-forsaken table.

I didn’t want that. It was stupid, death was an _out_ after all and I’d died hundreds of times, but I didn’t want it. I thought about it sometimes, but I didn’t take the out. None of us did. It was like having the out made us fight all the more to keep it. Made us fight to stay alive, and maybe that was why the Entity let us have our time, slim as it was.

Whatever.

I shuffled forward and I didn’t fall and I wanted a _god damn shower_!

Getting one was not a quick thing, though. I had to flip all those levers and valves and then wait around for the water to heat up. Given I was slow and stiff and filthy, that was fine, though. I stumbled around like an old man with cramped muscles straightening this and reacquainting myself with that and stripping out of my blood and dirt and death grimed clothes. Those I dumped into a tub of less-then-warm water, gave a quick scrub, and hung up for later use in the Entity. No use soiling _other_ clothes with that. I’d just stick with the same damn outfit. We all did, in the end… Like it was easier that way.

When I finally climbed into my shower and that pristinely heated water hit me, I cried my eyes out. Coming out of the Entity had some interesting side effects, sometimes mood swings among them, but this was all me.

You could never understand what it was like to have a shower, a real, hot, slow shower, until you’d been without for days… and days… and days, and you were so covered in grim you couldn’t tell where it ended and you began and you were just so internally hurt and drained it was like each drop on your skin was sentient and _alive_ and wanted to experience you. Until all you could do was stand there with one hand against the wall, shoulders shaking and the fingers of the hand not holding you up pressed to your eyes, while you wept and your hot tears mixed and mingled with the water carried away from you. _That_ was when you really felt a shower. When you let it take you away and take all your energy and turn your body limp.

I was hot several layers through by the time I stepped out and toweled off. My skin felt dry and steamed, and many of the aches the Doctor had left behind were gone. Most of me wanted to sleep, to curl up naked in my sleeping bag and while away some well-earned time doing little-to-nothing, maybe finding some food that tasted like something, but… another little piece of me didn’t have the energy for that.

Stupid not to have the energy to do _nothing_ but that was the truth of it. I couldn’t just sit around and I didn’t want to go slip through the woods and see what was out there. I was still aching with what had sent me off to poke at and annoy the _Oni_ and the Doctor to begin with, which was doubly stupid.

 _Let it go, Jake. Go to bed_ , a bitter part of my mind interjected, but I looked around the room, scanned over my sleeping bag, and kept going. I was lonely and the place was empty and I didn’t want to be at the campfire, didn’t want any of the others. They wouldn’t understand.

Sometimes, _I_ didn’t understand. I didn’t need _anybody_ , so why… why did I feel the walls closing in?

Suddenly, I didn’t want to be in reality, where I could die and stay dead and life had consequences that had to be _dealt_ with. Suddenly, the only place that felt _free_ was the Entity’s realm and I wanted to go back there. So, I threw on my half-wet clothes and bolted out my own door, feet carrying me with surety back where things made sense and I could be a little shit without any matter. Without…

…without…

The fog swirled around me, as if welcoming me back to heel, and I grit my teeth at it, turning on the balls of my feet and heading to a place I knew I could get some attention that wouldn’t be as quick as the _Oni’s_ or as lingering as the Doctor’s. The Trapper was always good for it and Evan always knew when I was fucking with his traps, without fail.

The MacMillan manor unfolded from the fog, like the substance was opening around it like a flower, almost like the Entity was laughing at me. Couldn’t stay away and couldn’t stay out of trouble and whatever I got myself into with the Trapper would be my own doing and that was my business, wasn’t it? If I wanted to get dismembered outside of a trial, well who was the Entity to get in my way?

Nobody.

Whatever, _whoever_ the Entity was, they would let me do this. Let me crouch down in the trees at the edge of Evan’s territory and start fiddling with his careful handiwork. I was part way through the fourth trap, and absorbed, when Evan found me.

He might have been standing there for some while, but I didn’t notice, until I had the trap dismantled and was getting ready to go to the next. Then I just sort of locked up and stared at him. The Trapper. There to take care of me. To punish me for my stupidity.

Though I couldn’t stay dead here and I’d trespassed with the intention of _getting killed_ and a wave of _fucking relief_ flooded me at the sight of the big man, I still bolted after a half second of this. It was better if I ran and the killers seemed to like it if I put up a fuss. If I squirmed and snarled and hissed at them. If I acted like I _didn’t_ want to die. Better sport, probably.

I vaguely wounded what Evan was thinking as my heart pounded and I attempted to dash away, but his hand reached out and snatched me back by the scruff of my neck, like I was a puppy, and drove the wondering from my mind. “Saboteur,” he rumbled in my ear from behind, and the familiar roll of his voice down my spine made me shiver.

Anticipation. That was it. Not fear, exactly, and not a sick want for the pain, but a glowing _want_ of what came between. The few, bare moments of Evan’s hands on me and his voice talking to me. At any given time, I hated being handled, despised it and avoided even brushing up against the other survivors, where I could, but sometimes… sometimes…

“You’re looking to die, Saboteur,” Evan said blandly, and I hissed and snapped at him, fighting in his hold around my neck. Only, Evan looked thoughtful, when he turned me to face him, and that was when it struck me he didn’t have his mask on. I was _looking at Evan’s face_ , and he was starring me down. Contemplative and curious.

He’d done for me three or four times this way already and hadn’t ever looked like this. Why now, and what the _hell_?! I dug my nails into his wrist for encouragement but Evan only grunted and sat down, cross-legged, and dragged me down with him. I gasped an indignant sound and clawed at him, but Evan didn’t seem to care. He let me scratch and watched me do it, until I was tired, then he pulled me to his face, so he could tilt mine from side to side and examine me.

“Or, are you looking for something else, Saboteur?”

The question shook me and I tried to deny it, tried to get away. Which was stupid and useless. Evan hauled me over his lap as easily as if I really were a puppy, and held me down with one arm. “Easy,” he admonished, and when I clawed at his hip and side, his hand came down on my ass in a painful swat that had me squealing in shock and surprise and outrage. Not even the Doctor had pulled that sound from me with his electricity and needles and Evan got it with one backhand to my ass.

One that turned to many, as he punished me now for continuing to fight. He kept it up, until my face was red as my ass surely was, and I’d given up on _fight_ in favor of hanging over him, limp and trembling and whimpering little, half-hearted sounds with each connection to my backside.

“Now,” Evan informed me, his hand resting on my tailbone, finger laying along my spine, “you’ll get what you need.”

I cried out at the first stroke, jerking on his lap, my fingers gripping the tough material of his pants, but then I just fell to panting shallow breaths, going limp over him again. Evan was _petting_ me. His hand snaking up under my shirt and track jacket, that had somehow come open, and he was stroking my back over and over. The pads of his fingers grazing every ridge of my spine, tracing my every curve, as if secrets were written there in the angles of my bones.

It made me blink and whimper more and try to curl in on myself, but Evan held me still and kept up his work, until I was exhausted. Sleepy. Worn from death and traveling between worlds and _aching_ and warm water and warm hands. I wasn’t even aware I was half unconscious and arching my back into each touch, like a cat, until Evan sighed.

“Quiet now, aren’t you, Saboteur?” he mumbled. “Little fool.”

My face reddened again because I was a fool, but I didn’t pull away. Just stayed there, taking everything he gave me. The contact along my skin, I knew I would regret the instant it was gone. The soft rush of his breathing around me, I understood I would miss because it meant I wasn’t alone. The caress of his callouses over my vertebrae I hadn’t known I _needed_ so badly. I would have stayed that way, draped over Evan’s lap, for however long he wanted to keep me, but he obviously thought I’d had enough.

Another exhale and he let me up, let me go, and I wasted no time with the going, despite myself and my _ache_. Darting off like a wounded animal let unexpectedly loose from the jaws of a predator. _Running._ Running hard and hating the fact Evan _had_ known what I’d needed. Hating the indelible necessity of the very thing I was adverse to.

**Author's Note:**

> This salty ball of angst and glitter is an original fiction author and fan fiction writer, who literally lives for comments and reader interaction. Even if this is nothing but inarticulate vowel screams, lol. He exist on a flotilla of social media, separated into a wide array writery things.
> 
> If you are crazy enough to want to see what I'm writing on any given day, and maybe try tempting me into writing something specific, feel free to join me in my personal writing Discord [Midway](https://discord.gg/jsQw96p), or friend me on Discord at LeoOtherland#7066 if you would rather chat one on one.
> 
> On Facebook I can be located on my [author page](https://www.facebook.com/LeoOtherland/) for all things original fiction, or in the [AO3 Armada group](https://www.facebook.com/groups/601270063618951) for all things fan fiction.
> 
> On [Twitter](https://twitter.com/RoseOfOtherLand) or [Tumbler](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/leootherlands) I primarily run with the fan fiction crowd and I seldom post and/or tweet anything, but if you want to drop me a line, I am always up for a chat.


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